


The Meaning of Home

by tardisly



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-08
Updated: 2018-11-08
Packaged: 2019-08-20 12:01:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16555376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tardisly/pseuds/tardisly
Summary: Eight and Charley have a discussion on what home means to them. Set immediately after Other Lives.





	The Meaning of Home

“Doctor…”

“Yes, Charley?”

They were in the TARDIS library, the Doctor atop a stepladder organizing books. At her voice, he smiled and looked down, a book with a thick red spine still held aloft in his hand. 

“I just…” She hesitated. She didn't know what she was about to say. But she had to say something… To find some way to voice the disquiet inside her. Their most recent endeavour, the Crystal Palace fiasco—it had unsettled her somehow. She needed someone to share it with. 

“Yes?” encouraged the Doctor, and, taking in her troubled look, began to descend the ladder. “Is everything alright?” His eyes flickered to hers. “You can tell me anything, you know.”

Charley gave a hollow laugh, and smiled up at him. He was a full head taller than her, perched on the stepladder. She could tell him anything. She’d come to trust him so much…

“It’s only that—well, it’s silly, but—The Crystal Palace, Monsieur and Madame Des Roches, the Duke of Wellington—that entire trip. It made me think...” She took a deep breath, uncertain of what she was about to say next. “It made me wonder, if, travelling here with you… I’ve wasted my life away. Because I hated it, living like a normal person, even if it was only one day—and I was pretending to be someone else. It just wasn't me anymore. And that scares me. I feel like… like I’m not human anymore. Like I don't belong on Earth.”

The Doctor nodded, considering her words. Charley had the strangest feeling they were more familiar to him than he’d like to admit. Then he stepped down, just the one step, so that their faces were now level. 

“Charley,” he said slowly, sincerely, clasping her hands in his, “you are one of the most wonderful people I’ve ever met. Trust me, believe me, when I say that you haven't wasted your life away. If anything, it’s the people of Earth who are wasting theirs—though I am terribly fond of them, as you know,” he hurried to add with a smile. “You are an adventurer, and you always were. If you feel that your place isn't on Earth anymore, it can only be because you've grown, changed, for the better.”

“But if you ask me,” he said, giving her hand a light squeeze, “Your place is here, with me.”

“Forever?”

The Doctor’s expression darkened for a moment, then settled back into the usual warm smile so quickly Charley thought she might've imagined it. 

“No. Not forever.” He swallowed and looked up, as if he couldn't stand to look her in the eye when he said it. “But as forever as we can make it.”

“You think I’m going to travel with you till I die,” she said suddenly, sadly. She didn't know why it made her sad, but it did. It almost moved her to tears. 

He shifted uncomfortably. “Er, of course not. I always assumed… that perhaps one day, you’d get tired of me.” He cleared his throat. “Er, I mean, maybe tired isn't the right word… Move on, maybe?”

Charley gave him a smile, but she was still tense. “Move on to where? I don't think there’s anywhere else I’d rather be, I could be, than here with you. But that's what I mean,” she added, “I don't feel like I belong anywhere. I don't think I could ever go back. My mum, my sisters—they don't mean anything to me anymore. When I said that my own mother wouldn't recognize me in Madame Des Roches’s makeup… well, I started to wonder, would she recognize me anyway?”

“You're feeling homesick,” the Doctor said, “for a home you don't miss anymore. Am I right?”

“I… suppose that's one way of putting it, yes.”

And then he did something that she didn't expect. He turned and sat down on the bottom rung of the ladder, sighed wearily, then told her, “I know exactly how you feel.”

She blinked. “You do?”

“Well, yes. I left Gallifrey, remember. I got bored. I wasn't like them. I was too wild, too adventurous, too thrill-seeking, and too unwilling to sit in stiff collars all day. They were my people, and I was nothing like them.”

Charley broke into a smile. “Like me. You ran away.”

“Well, yes, if that's what you like to call it. I still visit sometimes, of course—though usually not voluntarily,” he added. “And so I decided, a long time ago, that my home is here.” He patted the wood floor beneath them. 

“And it’s my home too,” sighed Charley, “isn't that right?”

“For as long as you like.”

They were quiet for a while, and then Charley said, “Do you think I did the right thing? Choosing this life. Because when I came with you,” she said, “to the Divergent universe, right, I choose you. I chose you then. Over my family, over any future I could have ever had, I chose you.”

His eyes twinkled with his smile. “Do you think you did the right thing?”

And then she looked up at him, finally meeting his gaze. She beamed. “I know I did.”

“Good. Good.” He was quiet for a moment. “Then I suppose it’s a good thing… that I chose you as well.”

“But you didn't,” she whispered, and the very thought of it stung at her eyes. “You didn't. You wanted to leave me behind.”

“I was half-delirious,” he said simply. Then he sighed. “No, I’m sorry, Charley. I should have apologized for this… much earlier. I was horrible to you. I only ever wanted to protect you.”

Silence again. This time, the Doctor broke it. 

“It’s okay to feel like you don't have a home,” he said wearily, and now he leant back on the ladder as if looking through the roof to the sky. “It’s okay to feel like you don't have a family. Like you can't be anchored, forever adrift.” He squeezed her hand. “It’s how I feel, every single day. And I think… it’s one of the most wonderful things in the world. 

Charley blinked, smiled, then shuffled over beside him. She rested her head on his shoulder, and let her gaze wander around the enormous stacks of books as she spoke. “You and C’rizz are all the family I need,” she said firmly, “And this is my home.” The TARDIS was her home... Tall, infinite, and beautiful. Neither here nor there, just like her. It was their own little patch of world in the ever-changing universe, and she loved it. 

“Doctor,” she asked, and already regretted the question the moment it passed her lips, “Why did you say I wasn't allowed to love you?”

She hadn't planned to say it. It has just slipped out, and now she realized how stupid it sounded. Juvenile. And breaking all sorts of barriers that had been in place between them. Why, why had she said it?

But the Doctor seemed surprised. “Whenever did I say that?”

“No yearnings,” Charley quoted expertly, her expression faltering a little. “What you said when we came back. I didn't understand at first. Why you said it only to me. And then I did.” She fell silent, uncertain what to say next. 

The Doctor seemed uncomfortable. (Of course he did, he was the Doctor. He didn't answer questions about love.) But answer he did. 

“Charley, that’s not... exactly what I meant for that to mean,” he muttered. Then he turned to face her, gray eyes meeting blue, as if determined to see this through to its end. “I thought it would be best not to hurt you anymore. To draw you away. To make you think that I could never care for—alright, yes, love—that I could never love you. Because I don't know if I can.”

Charley sat up. “But do you? Do you love me?” 

“I—It’s not... it never ends well,” muttered the Doctor, turning away. 

Charley put a finger to his chin, gently, and turned him to face her. “But do you?” Her voice was a whisper. 

“Yes,” he said softly, gray eyes searching around her face as though unsure where they should focus. “Yes, I do.”

She laughed—not a real, proper laugh, but the kind of laugh that dies in your throat the moment you laugh it. A syllable of surprise. “Whyever didn’t you say something before?”

“Because I’m not supposed to...” He swallowed, and his eyes flicked away. “I’m not supposed to care for people so much. I’m a Time Lord. I’m hundreds of years old. It’s dangerous.”

“Dangerous how?” she teased, her heart light and beating fast.

“In that I could rip all of time apart, just to save a single life. In that I could become ruthless, stop at nothing... just to save one person who means the world to me.”

“It’s me,” she breathed, impossibly close, “you did all that for me.”

“And I would do it again. Again and again and again.”

Again and again and again. The Doctor and Charley Pollard, living, dying, destroying the universe for each other. 

She belonged here. There was nowhere else she could ever belong anymore. All those other lives weren't for her, and now, would never be. Because the truth was, if the Doctor hadn't intervened, she’d be dead. She didn't belong on Earth, and she never had. 

And that was quite alright. Because she knew, for now, the TARDIS was a home she would never leave.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this when I was 14 and I just found it in my Google Drive. It was surprisingly good and I thought I’d share because why not :)


End file.
